In the morning of Day 02, we had a Fish Bowl conversation about the role of core teams in systemic transformation.

Core teams are responding to a life impulse, a calling, sometimes a wound that needs healing. A few people taking the responsability (the ability of some people to respond) to start an inquiry around the calling. In the case of the Finance Innovation Lab, 2 core teams formed at the same time within the WWF UK and at Reos Partners .

A relationship-building process started within the core team and through interviewing 50 people from the sector in London. Using dialogue interviews rather than fact-finding interviews has the purpose to build new relationships while creating a shared understanding of the system (see page 8 in this WWF One Planet Education report).

After building a strong core team, the process in the Finance Innovation Lab went into bigger meetings with representatives from the system – supported by an online community where working and innovation groups could meet and work after the face-to-face assemblies.

The Finance Innovation Lab is currently connecting to other core teams in the field and to core teams in different sectors. And when core teams connect we are creating systems of influence in society that Margaret Wheatley is talking about in Taking Social Innovation to Scale.

After the Fish Bowl, we connected to Odysseas who is part of the real democracy movement in Greece. People are currently self-organizing at Syntagma Square in Athens (see Maria’s story here): there is a core team of 200 people and people organize in different teams (e.g. food supply, communication, political philosophy, etc.) to host the political transformation in Greece. Again, relationship are key and Odysseas was saying „It is amazing how people started believing in each other.“ and as Maria had said earlier in our meeting „We should not hate our ministers but invite them onto the edge of transformation“.

While Odysseas was talking the transformation process of 1989 in Germany came into my mind: how the people of Eastern Germany went onto the street every Monday to peacefully bring down the dictatorship in their country. Thinking about this part of history, I hope that this systemic transformation process will be peaceful, as well!

2 Antworten zu Day 02: The role of core teams in systemic transformation

This is so critical and an area i long to understand more about. working with a few core teams right now and wanting to share core team learnings – what is best way for that to happen from what you have learned this weekend? is there a core team community of practice anywhere?